In most instances, creating text in Windows at your desktop or laptop computer is self-explanatory. Once in a while, however, you need to a character that is not found on the regular keyboard. To type a special character such as the trademark symbol ™, an arrow →, or a music note ♪, use alt codes (also referred to as symbol codes).

To put a special character on your page,

Press the Alt key to the left of the space bar at the bottom of your keyboard. Hold it down.

Press the Numeric Lock (Num Lock) key on the numeric keypad on the right-hand side of the keyboard.

While holding down the Alt key, type the code for the symbol you want to appear on the numeric keypad.

There are many more alt codes you may want to utilize, including extensive alt codes for foreign language letters, mathematics, currency, and coding. Using alt codes can enhance the precision of your writing and offer a new avenue for creativity.

There are many business networking and employment opportunities to be found at LinkedIn.com. In addition to making connections and perusing the site in real time, there is great value in sharing your LinkedIn profile URL online and on business cards so that others can connect with you. To that end, it is a good idea to change your randomly-generated LinkedIn URL to something short and memorable relating to your name or company name. Here’s how:

Create a LinkedIn URL for Your Personal Profile

Go to your profile page.

On the right side below “Add profile section,” click on “Edit public profile & URL.” A new window called “Public profile settings” will open.

At the top of the Public profile settings window on the right-hand side, click the edit pencil in the “Edit URL” section.

Personalize your URL. Your custom URL must contain 5-30 letters or numbers. You won’t be able to use spaces, symbols, or special characters. Remember, short and memorable is best.

Click “Save.”

Done!

Customize the URL on Your Company Page

Log into your LinkedIn account. Make sure your account has the admin rights to your LinkedIn company page.

This means that the URL you would like to use is available. Otherwise, keep trying until you find another one that is short, memorable, works for your branding, and is not in use.

Submit a request to change your URL using the LinkedIn Contact Us Form. Make sure to include your company name, company e-mail address that has admin rights, current company page URL, and the company URL to which you would like to make the change.

Wait for LinkedIn to contact you to say that your company URL has been customized.

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The Top Ten Reasons for Joining BNI

Time is priceless. Once you have spent it, it’s gone and cannot be returned.

Thus, when a member or a guest of the member arrives for a Business Networking International (BNI) meeting, the meeting will start on time and end on time. They soon learn that meetings are facilitated to maximum value, develop relationships and impart knowledge.

Of course, there are expectations from BNI for each member, which are agreed to when a new member is approved by the membership committee. If you are wondering why you should invest your priceless time, here are The Top Ten Reasons to Join BNI:

We allow only one member from each profession into the chapter. No member will have to be concerned about another member from their industry receiving referrals.

The primary purpose BNI is to increase business for its members. What goes around comes around. You send business to members, they’ll send business to you.

As a member of BNI, you’ll begin to feel like the membership is your own group of personal salespeople. Each member has a BNI card file with everyone’s business cards in it. Members can then distribute those cards to others outside the group.

“Word of mouth” remains the best way to advertise, even in this Digital Age. BNI’s structure allows for developing and exchanging quality business referrals. If you need referrals, then you need BNI.

BNI teaches business people to develop relationships that result in referrals for each other. It is not about you and your business “hard selling” to others. You may actually become personal friends with members which could last a lifetime.

BNI isn’t the only business network around. Each member has their own personal and business network. That “extended network” may be a source of many weekly business referrals. On average, each BNI Chapter (three months old and older) hand out more than 60 referrals each month to its members.

How you increase and maintain your word-of-mouth-based business depends on the BNI process. Each member educates each other about what they do and the kinds of referrals they want. Our success is tied to your success in business.

Because of your business being the only one of its kind in BNI, you will have an edge over your competitors. None of your competitors can join this chapter. Only one person per profession.

BNI is a coalition of businesses. Each industry is represented by one person. This mutual support system helps each other increase business by giving each member referrals.

Referrals are key! Members may get most of their business from referrals. After all, BNI is about GIVING BUSINESS to its members.

So, when our BNI Capital Business Alliance Chapter meets every week, we have a tight and set agenda, with roles for everyone, including guests. It’s essential that we don’t waste anyone’s time. We are all business owners or operators who are quite busy and want to achieve the best use of our time when we meet.

One of the many reasons that BNI is such a successful networking organization in the DMV/Washington, D.C. Beltway area is that we recognize that small business owners wear many hats and have to do a lot of tasks in their work day. Networking can be a chore for many of them, so BNI has designed its meetings to be built around one main goal: Building Relationships.

Now, “building relationships” may sound rather generic or boring vanilla, but it isn’t for our networking chapter! It is through building relationships with our fellow business owners, that we learn, assist and even patronize. You cannot help someone unless you get to know them.

Finally, BNI is a structured, organized and goal-oriented relationship-building place for small business owners who want to give referrals, receive referrals and build lasting business and personal relationships. It is designed to make networking efficient and fun.

To find out more about BNI visit the global website, www.bni.com, and find a meeting near you. You can also visit our Bethesda Maryland Chapter website: http://bnicentralmaryland.com/bnicapitalbiz, or contact our 2018 president, Brian Loebig of Loebig Ink, LLC: brian@loebigink.com.

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A growing negative SEO technique is showing it’s ugly face more than ever as website owners begin to see the value in increasing their search engine visibility. The analytics guru’s at Alexa by Amazon describe the issue in detail in the article, Negative SEO is Real. The main sources of harm come from “link farms”, spammy links, scrapped content that is duplicated across the web, fake reviews and hacked websites and malware attacks.

Our SEO team has seen each of these problems across the several hundred SEO projects we have managed as well. One of the most prominent problems we see regularly is harmful and spammy backlinks. Using a quality backlink monitoring tool such as Majestic.com, SEMRush.com or Ahrefs.com needs to be a tool in every site owners tool box. The following steps were created to help you identify these links and signal Google to not penalize your site when these backlinks appear.

Create a .txt file of all the domains you wish to disavow.

Go to Majestic.com and search for your domain in the main “Site Explorer Results” search field.

Select the “Ref Domains” tab to get a list of all the referring domains

Click on the number listed in the “Backlinks” column to reveal the top ten links from that website.

Visit a few links to determine if they appear to be from a site created for the sole purpose of creating back links, i.e. a spammy website. A root domain with a Trust Flow score of “0” and a high Citations score is sign the site might be harmful.

If the site is spammy, create a .txt file in MS Notepad, or similar plain text editor, and add the domain on the top line preceded by “domain:”

E.g. domain:crimsonnight.net

Continue until all spammy domains are listed. Put each domain on it’s own line.

Select the appropriate domain that is being linked to and click “DISAVOW LINKS” button

Read Google note and click “Done”

Disavowing backlinks is an advanced SEO strategy and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this process can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you only disavow backlinks if you believe that there are a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you.

Note: When new domains need to be added to the disavow .txt file, they should be added to a new, single, growing list of previously disavowed domains. Google references this single .txt file when indexing a website so any future domains should be added to a new .txt file and uploaded again replacing the file that was previously created.

Google adds a “nofollow” link from the spammy website links to the client’s site so that it is not penalized for having spammy links which is a Google Penguin Algorithm update. It can take several weeks to a few months for Google to recrawl an entire domain.

One of the most important directory listings on the Internet for a small business is the Google My Business listing. This online directory integrates the Google Maps listing with the Google Plus page, Google Reviews and event YouTube. Since a small business Google listing can appear at the top of a Google search result, it is critical to claim or create and optimize ones Google My Business account for increased search engine visibility.

When embarking on this local SEO strategy many businesses find that their Google Maps listing has already been claimed by someone unknown to the business. In this case, there are a series of steps that need to be taken to claim a Google listing that is already verified. Good luck and have patience on your quest to enhance this important digital footprint!

You must first decide what email address you want to use to ‘claim’ the business listing. It is recommended that an email address be used that is connected to the business domain name such as webmaster@mywebsite.com.

Google requires that the email address being used to claim the local business be connected to a Google Apps account. If the email address is already connected to Google Apps, go to step 4. If it is not connected to Google Apps, you will need to create a Google account and choose the option “I prefer to use my current email address.

Go to Google My Business and click “Start Now” http://www.google.com/business and either login, if using an existing email address connected to Google or select ‘create an account’ and associate a new email address with Google

Type in the address of the business you want to claim

You will see a message that says, “Someone else has already verified this listing”

Click “Request Admin Rights”

Select “No, the business is currently managed by someone else.”

Select “No” to the question “Is this business verified by a user whom you’re able to contact?”

Fill out the form that follows and submit

Then, the waiting begins. It can take one or two weeks for Google reps to review the request and listing.

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Adding a manager to your Twitter ads account is a fairly simple process. A Twitter Ads Manager can help you setup and monitor campaigns that target very specific audiences or followers of other relevant Twitter pages.

On the top right, click the drop down menu under your account name and select “Edit access to account”

Click “Add more Users…”

Enter your account managers name or Twitter handle in the text field.

Set the level of access as “Account Administrator”. This level is necessary to give the ad manager the ability to create a tracking pixels to measure website conversions and to create Twitter cards if that is needed as well.

On the top right corner of the business manager overview page click the green “Add New” button and select “People” from the menu.

In the Add New People popup window type in the ad manager’s email address and select a role; admin or employee. (Loebig Ink affiliated clients should choose the ‘admin’ role). Then click the “Add People” button.

On the next page select the page to be managed by the advertiser and choose a role; admin or employee. (Loebig Ink affiliated clients should choose the ‘admin’ role). Then click the “Next” button.

On the next page select the ads account to be managed by the advertiser and choose a role; admin or employee. (Loebig Ink affiliated clients should choose the ‘admin’ role). Then click the “Next” button.

On the next page called “Assign Product Catalogs” click “Skip” and to the the final page.

The final page will verify that an invitation has been sent to the advertiser to gain access to your Facebook Business Manager account.

The advertiser will receive a confirmation email that looks like this:

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Brian Jackson is a sports anchor and reporter at WJXT Channel 4, in Jacksonville, FL. Guest blog author, Nia Crawford, was excited to interview Mr. Jackson since her own dream is to study sports broadcasting after she finishes her senior year in high school.

Career Influences
I knew probably around 7th or 8th grade that I wasn’t going to be able to play sports professionally. I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the NFL or NBA. Sports reporting was the closest thing to get me to there. If I couldn’t be in the league I might as well get paid to go talk about them! Sports was always a big part of my childhood.

Biggest Career Success
The biggest success of my career is probably being able to have the job I have now. It’s really being able to achieve and live a dream. I am a sports anchor and reporter at the No. 1 rated TV station in Jacksonville Florida. I walk down the street and people actually recognize me from watching me on the TV. It’s kind of weird sometimes.

Recent Lessons Learned
Throughout my career I’ve learned patience more than anything. It’s a very competitive field; a lot of people aren’t going to be on your team. They’re going to tell you “hey your not good enough”. You are going to get told “no” a lot. I probably applied to 500 jobs before I got this one. So the biggest lesson is just patience and perseverance. That’s probably what I can say I learned the most.

What Inspires and Motivates you?
Well this sports broadcasting career is all I’ve ever wanted to do. This has been my dream since I was a kid. I’ve always wanted to be a sports reporter and anchor. Now I’m actually getting a chance to do that. To be able to live out a childhood dream, that’s what, keeps me going. Also, its one of those fields where you get better by doing it every day, so that’s what helps too.

Share a leadership story
A lot of times in this industry you’re actually put on your own. Nobody is really looking ver my shoulder. I have to get done what I have to get done on my own.

Your Top Two

“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs…One step at a time.” -Rande Wilson

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD,plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” -Jeremiah 29:11

About Brian Jackson

Brian Jackson is a sports anchor and a reporter at WJXT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida. Brian is a native Chicagoan and proud alum of Howard University in Washington D.C. Connect with Brian on all his social media sites!

Tamika Smith is a weekend news anchor and reporter at NPR’s WAMU 88.5. Guest blog author, Sanarah Missouri, says, “I always find it fascinating to learn from individuals in the media industry. They either possess a great personality, ambition, or courage and she has it all!

Her knowledge and experiences have helped her to become the incredible journalist she is today.”

My career began when I was a 13-year-old in Miami, Florida with NBC 6 Junior Broadcaster program.At that specific point, I was introduced to journalism and fell in love with it. I started to pursue my career in high school. The program introduced me to being a reporter and an anchor. I also learned how to edit and the different ins and outs of being a part of a news program. From that point on, I decided to continue with the career.

2. Biggest Career Success

My biggest career success up-to-date will have to be hosting for NPR’s WAMU 88.5. It is one of the top 10 stations in the nation. I also make an effort to consistently give back while I pursue my career. It can be very challenging, but I make time for speaking to and mentoring young people in this industry.

3. Recent Lessons Learned

Being great at your craft is very important, but being a good person is as important. I’m someone that can find humor in a situation that is very intense. No one wants to be around a “Debbie Downer”.

4. What Inspires and Motivates

Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of role models to emulate when I was growing in the field of journalism. It wasn’t until I got to college, at Howard University, that I started being able to meet different journalists of color and started to have people that I could look up to. Early in my career, I was introduced to various women such as Michel Martin, Michele Norris, and Mary Major. Being able to work with these women of color and seeing women in leadership positions in the industry gave me the courage to believe that I can do the same thing.

5. Share a Leadership Story

In December 2010, I was working at AOL’s Patch.comand I just came back from doing a story about a teacher at Montgomery Blair High School. I was getting ready to sit down at a coffee shop when I received a call.

I was one of the first journalists on the scene. It was very intense with people running past me. I immediately started tweeting and called my editor. I was leading the coverage at the time because no one was in that vicinity of downtown Silver Spring.

6. Your Top Two

a. “Throw me to the wolves and I will return leading the pack” –Unknown.

b. “Be the change you wish to see in the world”– Mathama Ghandi.

7. About Tamika Smith

Tamika Smith is a multimedia journalist in the D.C. area. She reports on various local issues, from politics to the environment. Smith is currently an anchor/reporter for NPR’s WAMU 88.5

Twitter announced some additional functionality to make direct messaging your followers more convenient. On both the desktop and mobile versions of Twitter a ‘direct message’ (DM) icon is now visible and makes it easier to send those contacts a personal message.

The direct message functionality is also built into tweets that appear on Twitter profiles. Tapping and holding a tweet will bring up a menu with the new option to DM someone the selected tweet.

Direct Message Button on Desktops

Direct Message Button on Mobile

Tap and hold a tweet to bring up menu with option to share via direct message: